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RUBY:

Hey there, I’m Ruby Jones. Welcome to 7am’s summer series: an exploration of big ideas with some of our favourite contributors and thinkers.

Lachlan Murdoch is the presumptive heir to the global Murdoch media fortune – and with his father, Rupert, now aged 91, he could soon be leading the empire.

But Lachlan’s rise to the top has not been smooth. After a bright start, the firstborn son fell out of grace with his father and was exiled to Australia, only to return to favour when the family was in crisis.

Now it seems that Lachlan could be the successor to the empire after all. So who is he and what does Lachlan Murdoch stand for?

Journalist Paddy Manning has long chronicled the Murdoch empire, and his latest book – The Successor – is the first biography of Lachlan.

Today, Paddy Manning on what drives Lachlan Murdoch.

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RUBY:

Paddy, you've spent the last couple of years immersing yourself in the world of Lachlan Murdoch. Could you begin by telling me a bit about the process of trying to get access to the life of someone like Lachlan, getting access to the people around him and to his world?

PADDY:

Yeah, it really was difficult. It's probably the hardest book I've worked on in so many ways because Lachlan has lived in the public spotlight for his entire adult life 30 years. But the reality is Lachlan has been remarkably private for someone who's had the upbringing he's had and the profile he's had. He has managed to keep his own personal views to himself and he's got a clear line around his family, which he has managed to keep private. So I spent months and months trying to build up a relationship with his advisors, including his spokespeople, and also the kind of inner circle of people closest to Lachlan who did eventually speak to me off the record. So what I think I ended up with is a good picture of how Lachlan sees, you know, those key events in his life from his upbringing in the States to his arrival in Australia and and through the highs and lows of his business career since.

RUBY:

In your book you go right back to the beginning of Lachlan's life, and I'm hoping we can talk a little bit about that as a way to kind of understand how exactly he was moulded for the future. It seems like he's about to step into, because he was sent to exclusive schools. He was given a lot of the preparation, I think, that you would expect billionaires would give their eldest son with the view to them ending up taking over the, quote unquote, family business. So how was Lachlan shaped for this role?

PADDY:

It was another journalist that I think wrote that. The Murdoch children, they were all raised to be junior media moguls. They've served a lifelong apprenticeship in business to Rupert. Now, one by one, actually, they’ve fallen out of the business except for Lachlan. He's kind of the last man standing now. But, you know, Lachlan says himself in one of his early interviews when he first came out to Australia that they're quite a private family they don't talk about their feelings much, but they can talk about the business forever.

And I think the family, in fact, relate through the business and that one of the aspects of The Succession series that kind of rings true.

Everyday since they were born the overwhelming obsession at home has been the company.

Archival tape -- Kendall Roy:

“I take over and we just, you know, you two under me co-presidents.”

Archival tape -- Roman Roy:

“I mean, Can I think about it?”

Archival tape -- Kendall Roy:

“Yeah, of course”

Archival tape -- Roman Roy:

“I thought about it. Fuck you.”

PADDY:

He was the eldest son and in the nineties was described by Rupert as the first among equals. That caused a bit of consternation amongst the siblings because I don't think they necessarily saw Lachlan in that way. But Rupert saw in that way he was a bit of a favourite. It's Lachlan that's sent out to Australia in the nineties, so he's kind of got this kind of dutiful kind of aura about him. But when he goes back to America in 2001, he finds himself surrounded by the most powerful people in the Murdoch empire, Roger Ailes, the co-founder of Fox News, alongside Rupert, Peter Chernin, the chief operating officer. They don't see their role as, you know, looking after Lachlan or in fact, they see him as a threat. And they undermine him. And by 2005, there's a combination of things going on. There's Lachlan getting frustrated by Rupert's most powerful executives in New York, finding that he can't he can't make decisions. He can't win arguments. So he was stymied at work. And so Lachlan's decision to quit at that time in 2005, I think, is working out of the tension within the family about the resolution of the divorce and also professional frustration by Lachlan at being stymied by Ailes and Chernin. And there was also an element where Lachlan found when he moved to Australia, he loved it. You know, his wife Sarah is Australian. They were pining for Australia and by 2005 Lachlan walks out.

Archival tape -- Presenter:

“The next speaker is our rebel with a cause. He's the leadership council of the climate group, he's a crack cartoonist, an entrepreneur, a visionary and a risk taker… James Murdoch!”

PADDY:

And so while Lachlan has chosen to opt out, his brother James is rising through the ranks.

Archival tape -- James Murdoch:

“I think the key thing is that the pace of change in all of this is accelerating - staying behind or staying back defending your territory trying to erect barriers to entry in your business those things are places that can end in tears, so change is something that’s become crucial to us at Sky and how we approach everything we do.”

PADDY:

According to Lachlan’s people kind of starts to believe that he should be taking over the company himself and that he's a better businessman than his father and that he wants to try to push Rupert out of the way and set up his own kind of power base in London to challenge kind of Rupert’s hegemony back in New York.

RUBY:

Okay, so while James is climbing the ranks in the UK, Lachlan leaves the company, moves back to Australia, starts a family and has this kind of nice life in Australia for a while. So at what point do things change? How does Lachlan end up coming back into the fold?

PADDY:

In a word, I think it's the phone hacking crisis.

Archival tape -- BBC reporter:

“This used to be a powerhouse of tabloid journalism. But this place once the News of the World newsroom was where the seeds of a scandal were sown.”

PADDY:

What happens in 2011 is that The Guardian reveals that News of the World journalists had hacked the phones of murdered British schoolgirl Milly Dowler.

Archival tape -- BBC reporter:

“It led to dawn raids, the arrests of journalists, the editors questioned in parliament.”

PADDY:

There's a wave of revulsion that is still, to this day, the biggest crisis that the Murdoch empire has ever faced.

And so when that story breaks in 2011, all hell breaks loose for the Murdoch’s.

Archival tape -- Protestor:

“Murdoch should be imprisoned for the 4,000 victims of phone hacking, he should be in prison for, we don't know what else has happened all across the news that he owns.”

PADDY:

Lachlan at this point now is in Sydney. He has nothing to do. He's on the board, but he has nothing to do with the phone hacking scandal.

Lachlan flies over to London and alongside Anna, he stays Rupert's hand and he rallies the family around James and they sort of circle the wagons. You can really kind of trace Lachlan's ascendancy from that point. At around this time, we don't know exactly when, but in the wake of this, the phone hacking scandal. Rupert starts talking to Lachlan, about coming back into the fold.

And what I'm told is that Lachlan was actually quite reluctant. He had no desire to go back and really work for the family business. He was happily establishing his own company and he needed assurances really from Rupert that he wasn't going to be undercut again. And more than that, he sort of needed to hear from Rupert that for the first time, Rupert wasn't kind of bestowing a favour on his kids. He was actually asking Lachlan to do something for him. It's only when Rupert's language shifted that Lachlan agrees, and that only happens in sort of finally, it only happens in 2014. And at that point, Lachlan agrees to come back and be the co-executive chairman of 21st Century Fox. And it sort of emerges at this point that Lachlan is going to be sort of 1A to James 1B. He's got the chairman role and James effectively, as even as chief executive, will be reporting to him. And that's kind of agreed by the board, agreed by Rupert, and then told to James at a lunch. And James is outraged, walks out, apparently flies off to Bali. And at that point, Lachlan is pretty clearly the successor.

Archival tape -- Donald Trump:

“I will build a great, great wall on our southern border and I will have Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.”

PADDY:

And by the time you've got the 2016 election, it's pretty clear that, you know, there's something new happening in politics, you know, this populist wave that, you know, results in Brexit, Trump. Arguably even at the Australian election later, Scott Morrison, that there is a shift to the right.

RUBY:

We'll be back after this.

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RUBY:

So Paddy, Lachlan Murdoch he’s already the executive chairman and CEO of Fox. So he’s been stepping into these leadership roles in the Murdoch empire as Rupert Murdoch steps back. Is that likely to continue on, is Lachlan first in line, in the Murdoch family?

PADDY:

Absolutely. So just in the lead up to publication of the book, actually, Fox Corporation and News Corporation announced that they had set up special committees to examine the pros and cons of a merger between the two. Lachlan had brought the boards and the senior leadership of both companies together at his mansion in Beverly Hills at the beginning of 2022, as we can now see, precisely to consider a merger, the increased scale, there was a commercial logic to it. But the other thing that the merger will do is entrench Lachlan's control. The merger does have the blessing of the Murdoch family trust. And the trust has eight votes. Rupert has four, and each of his four older kids have one. And at the moment, Rupert plus Lachlan, equals five out of eight. They can control the empire. As far as Rupert’s concerned, the succession is done. Lachlan is sitting there at the moment as the chief executive of Fox Corporation and soon is likely to emerge, I think as executive chairman of both companies.

But when Rupert dies, those four votes expire and Lachlan then faces a four way tussle for control of the business, he's only one vote and he has to work with his siblings. What I'm told very clearly is that they are aligned and that they are determined to exercise control of the Murdoch businesses. And I'll quote from the book "to do it in a way that enhances democracies around the world rather than undermining them". The siblings believe it's in the long term interests of democracies around the world for that to be four shareholders in the family trust who are active owners in the business. As one analyst, Wall Street analyst told me off the record, it's fair to assume that Lachlan gets fired the day Rupert dies. Now, I don't think that it's going to happen that immediately that's a shorthand. You know, there's a board and shareholders who have to be consulted before you, you know, remove the chief executive. But the dynamic is clear. Lachlan's older siblings are opposed and they want to bring this Fox News back to heel. And in the context of the midterm elections that we've just seen and the January six committee hearings, the shocking evidence that we've heard of the threat to democracy from Trump and Trumpism this year, that's a statement that's pregnant with significance.

RUBY:

Right. So what you're saying is what you've been told is that some members of the family are not happy with the editorial line that has been taken in the past. And they're going to look to try and change that whenever it is that Rupert Murdoch passes away.

PADDY:

Correct. And James and Catherine, his wife, have been publicly critical of Fox News on issues like climate change, on issues like the big lie in the wake of the 2020 election. Now previously it had been reported that Lachlan and Rupert had tried to buy them out, buy out the siblings because they were internal critics and they could run it themselves. Lachlan couldn't get the money together and also believed that there was nothing in it for him. He wouldn't give him anything that he didn't already have. He already had control. He already was the chosen successor. So why would he want to buy them out? But what I'm told is that offer is off the table. The idea of the siblings selling is gone. They want to reassert control of the business and do it in a way, as I say, that enhances democracies around the world. And James and Catherine have been prominent donors to the Democratic Party in the United States. Lachlan and Rupert have been prominent donors to the conservatives, the Republican Party. They are on a collision course.

RUBY:

The scene is really set, Paddy, for a fight for the soul of the Murdoch empire. Really?

PADDY:

Yeah, it absolutely is. Because just as there's been a kind of fight for the soul of America, the same divisions that are writ large in American politics have been played out inside the Murdoch family.

That process. You can see it started in 2017. One of the very first things that the Trump administration did was to ban immigration from seven Muslim majority nations.

Archival tape -- Donald Trump:

“Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.”

PADDY:

Now that causes a rift within the family because James and Catherine are pushing for Fox to make a very strong statement denouncing it. Rupert and Lachlan try and soften it down. A statement does go out. But fast forward six months when you have the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally.

Archival tape -- Rally:

“Jews will not replace us!”

PADDY:

And, you know, neo-Nazis in Virginia shouting Jews will not replace us. It's James and Catherine that make a statement, not Lachlan and Rupert. And you can already see in the first year of the Trump administration that the rift is widening.

RUBY:

And just finally to come back to Lachlan, because he's the man who the biography is about, you said that he is Rupert Murdoch's favourite. He's the favourite son. But to what extent do you think that the two men are similar and do any kind of similarities or differences in their personalities? Shine a light on the way that Lachlan might run the company?

PADDY:

Well, Lachlan is not a clone of Rupert at all. That is another of the key takeouts for me from the book and the work that I did. Lachlan is actually, I think, more hands off than Rupert. Rupert is a famously interventionist, kind of all seeing all powerful editor in chief type figure. The Murdoch genius over a century now has been to govern by media, to be a kingmaker, if you like, whether it's in Australian politics, as Sir Keith was, or whether it's UK, US politics as Rupert has been throughout his career, deeply enmeshed in that political system, one of the most powerful men in the world, Joe Biden, in a recent book, is quoted saying he regards Rupert as the most dangerous man in the world. Lachlan is very different. Lachlan does not desire, I think, to be a kingmaker. He is focussed on the business. I think he's focussed on growing the business, the bottom line, making more money and growing wealth for his family and he's hands off to a fault. I think the picture that emerges from my research and the interviews I did, whether it's his time at the New York Post where it was his presence, was hardly felt on the newsroom, despite his love of newspapers and everything else. He was not seen there kind of you're making out the front page and what that leads to. I think that kind of hands off approach to the editorial is talent like Tucker Carlson taking over.

Archival tape -- Tucker Carlson:

“This may be a lot of things, this moment we’re living through but it is definitely not about black lives. And remember that when they come for you… and at this rate they will… anyone who's ever been subjected to the rage of the mob knows the feeling it’s like being swarmed by hornets you cannot think clearly and the temptation is to panic.”

PADDY:

And he's doing that because it's profitable. I mean, Liz Warren, the Democratic presidential hopeful back in the 2020 election, she called Fox News a hate for profit racket. You know, you can't underestimate just in the midterm cycle, we've just gone through record political advertising.

Archival tape -- Tucker Carlson:

“Unless you can prove you’ve taken the injection that the democratic party demands you take, you are no longer permitted in bars, comedy clubs even some dance competitions in the state of New York you’re too dirty to appear in public, you're not welcome near normal people medical Jim Crow has come to America, if we still had water fountains, we'd have seperate ones.”

PADDY:

Fox News profits from the inflamed passions of a polarised electorate. It goes straight to the bottom line in the form of political advertising, not to mention the whole question of whether Fox News' cornered the centre right.

Archival tape -- Tucker Carlson:

“I know that the left and all the little gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term replacement, if you suggest that the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World. Let's just say it. That's true.”

PADDY:

You can argue a commercial strategy, now Lachlan has counterarguments that, you know, social media more than the mainstream media is responsible for the polarisation of politics in America and sending people down rabbit holes. And there's no doubt that that's true. But Fox News has its own role. And yeah he can't walk away from that even if he does have other people running Fox News for him. The benefits go to him.

RUBY:

Paddy, thank you so much for your time.

PADDY:

Thank you Ruby.

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